All posts tagged Moore’s Law

In 1965, Intel founder Gordon E. Moore predicted computer processing power, measured in terms of the number of transistors which could be placed on a chip, would double roughly every 18 months. But, particularly with the growth in the number of portable computing devices, “Moore’s law” has become increasingly irrelevant.

What matters now is power consumption, whether it is cutting the cost of giant data centers or making sure the battery in your laptop, cellphone or tablet lasts all day. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Technology Review published by MIT reports that researchers have found that energy efficiency also doubles roughly every 18 months, an effect it dubs “Koomey’s law” after the leader of the project, Jonathan Koomey, consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

He started by looking at the first general-purpose computer, the Eniac, built for the U.S. Army in 1956.

Even before the advent of discrete transistors, Koomey says, energy efficiency doubled every 18 months. “This is a fundamental characteristic of information technology that uses electrons for switching,” he says. “It’s not just a function of the components on a chip.”

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